A parade made up mostly of ancient tractors, lovingly kept in operating condition and driven proudly down East Grand Forks' DeMers Avenue by their owners, kicked off the city's Heritage Days celebration Saturday.
But it was their destination, Heritage Village, that really put the "heritage" in Heritage Days.
There, people like the self-taught blacksmith Rick Hagan, the ink-stained linotype operator John Schaffer, rosemaling expert Lucille Langheid and a cast of dozens, including Abraham Lincoln himself, offered a glimpse into past.
Heritage Days was first celebrated in 1976 on the nation's bicentennial and has continued ever since.
Hagan, a board member and former board president at the village, said he's been at the event since the very beginning. He used to show off his antique tractors, but eventually learned blacksmithing, he said.
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On Saturday, Hagan was hanging out in front of a hot forge, hammering a glowing orange rebar around a large metal cone called a cone mandrel.
It's about 100 years old and was used to put curves in metal bars, he said. When he makes enough of circles out of the re-bars, he said, he'll turn them into a fence in the smithy.
Now that he's retired, he can volunteer at the Heritage Village fulltime, he said.
Volunteers
There were many volunteers like Hagan at Heritage Village Saturday. Unlike him, many learned their craft from original sources.
Langheid, whose parents are from Norway, said she learned rosemaling, a Norwegian style of decorative painting, on a 1971 visit to the old country.
She showed off a collection of painted wooden plates and boards, several decorated by her with sweeping scrolls and flowers. The latest design is of a white, almost glowing church, on a dark plate.
In another building, Schaffer sat at the inky-black linotype machine, which was used by the Herald from 1917 to 1957. It's called a linotype because it produces lines of lead type that goes into the printing press.
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Schaffer said he first learned how to use such machines from a newspaper publisher in 1978 at a heritage festival in Rollag, Minn. That year, he said, he and his wife volunteered to be re-enactors in the print shop.
Though he said he's still discovering tricks of the trade, he's familiar enough with the Rube-Goldberg-esque machine to show the complex path the molds make from the moment the operator types on a keyboard, to when melted lead is poured into them, to when they're lifted back up to their initial position, ready for reuse.
Outside in a field, other volunteers were operating an ancient threshing machine. Some manned a steam-powered tractor as it turned a belt attached to the thresher, while others stuffed the thresher full of wheat stalks. It spat out hay from one tube and grains of wheat from the other.
During the day, Civil War volunteers were scheduled to hold drills and Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln, played by Max and Donna Daniels from Illinois, were greeting visitors.
Heritage Days continue today starting around noon at Heritage Village.
Call Tran at (701) 780-1248; (800) 477-6572, ext. 1248; or send email to ttran@gfherald.com .
